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About this degree
From adapting to climate change to enhancing agricultural productivity and providing water, energy, medicines and education to the billions without access, countries the world over need to harness scientific and technological innovation to transform their economies and improve human wellbeing. However, most countries, developing countries in particular, often have innovation systems that are weak, fragmented and not designed to respond to pressing national and local priorities.
Our Development, Technology and Innovation Policy MPA takes candidates through an experiential learning journey in which they will emerge equipped with the tools, mental models and skills to creatively tackle persistent and emerging development questions in pursuit of vibrant, sustainable, profitable and inclusive economies across the developing world.
This MPA will tackle a series of pressing questions for policymakers, such as:
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How can countries, in particular low- and middle-income countries, achieve their development goals in the face of rapid technological change, increased global interdependencies, and a wide range of wicked problems such as disease epidemics and climate change?
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How best can countries engage in policy experimentation and/or prototyping in pursuit of their development targets?
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Should emerging economies follow innovation and development models used by advanced economies or should they pioneer new approaches to innovation?
Who this course is for
This is a practitioner-oriented, professional programme with practical learning activities aimed at students who want to be part of the next generation of thinkers and practitioners influencing the interfaces between national and global development imperatives with tools from science, technology, innovation, engineering and public policy. This MPA draws students from diverse technical and non-technical disciplinary backgrounds and levels of work experience. A key requirement is for candidates’ interest in and willingness to engage with and interrogate ideas from science, technology, innovation and engineering and their contribution to societal development.
What this course will give you
This MPA offers empirically and conceptually grounded experiential learning to sharpen the skills needed for managing the interface between policy, technologies, innovations and societal objectives. Students can learn through inquiry, going beyond describing or explaining the concepts learnt, to applying and interrogating the different concepts and tools in different scenarios of development challenges.
Students undertake a week-long scenario activity on the policymaking process, engaging with external experts and UCL academics. Students go on to undertake a nine-month major group project on a policy challenge for a real-world client or undertake their own individual project independently or with an existing employer. Development-oriented policy areas explored in past projects include health, agriculture, energy, waste, transport, and digital technologies.
Students also have the opportunity to network with UCL STEaPP's broad range of international partners, expert Faculty members and a diverse range of academics and professionals from across the department's MPA and doctoral programmes, as well as the wider UCL community.